


we are bound (by symmetry)

by lachambre11



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Everybody Loves Danny, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Multi, Sorry Not Sorry, Sterek if you squint, friendship and romantic relationships, minor aidenxlydia, team jawline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachambre11/pseuds/lachambre11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- and whatever differences our lives have been<br/>we together make a limb</p><p>Seven people and the different ways they love and ache and move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are bound (by symmetry)

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, it only took me a year to gather the courage to write this. It's is basically independent POVs from Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinski, Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Isaac Lahey, Boyd and Danny Mahealani - about how they love, and who they love, inspired by fragments from the book "This Is How You Lose Her", by Junot Diaz. 
> 
> UPDATE: beta-ed by the lovely why_didn't_i_get_any_soup. Thank you dearest!

**_we are bound (by symmetry)_ **

 

**1\. Isaac**

_“My heart is beating like it’s lonely, like there’s nothing else inside of me.”_

 

You had watched them before – back then, when everything was just starting out and their love seemed like an unstoppable force, bright and strong enough that everyone could see even when they weren’t together. Back then you didn’t know shit about werewolves, kanimas and Alphas packs; there was just you, working alone at the cemetery, cleaning the house, trying to make yourself look as small as possible, less of a target for Him to hit.

 

Back then, everything was so much simpler, the hurt was different too. There were the nights when He locked you in the freezer and the nights where you were allowed to sleep on your own bed, even though you couldn’t quite manage to fall asleep – not when everything ached, when every part of you was bruised, inside and out. You knew your enemy, you knew when the pain was coming, and who would be the one doing the inflicting. It was better, sometimes, to live like that. To know.

 

Now… now there’s less yelling and bruising and name-calling, but there’s still hands reaching under your skin – bruising and feverish – tearing your ribcage apart, scratching at your heart, squeezing it with a grip so strong that it shouldn’t be possible, but it is… it is.

 

You see his smile, dimpled and sweet, and it  _hurts_. It hurts worse than anything that Allison’s knives ever did to your body. It embarrasses you maybe even more than that time that He left you locked and stewing in your own filth for two days and you were so numb by the end of it that you couldn’t even bring yourself to cry in the shower, scrubbing away the residues of your shame.

 

It hurts because it’s not for  _you_ – that smile – it’s never for you even when it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It humiliates you because this is the final proof, the one thing that makes it clear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you like He had always said and that it makes Him right, doesn’t it?

 

 Who are you to want this? To want all of his smiles? To want _any_ of his smiles?

 

You’ve done nothing to deserve it – not one little thing – and you’re just selfish, and you’ve taken something as pure and simple as the friendship he’d offered with wide eyes and open fists and twisted it into something else, something ugly, something made of desire and need; this is not a thing he wants from you, this is not a thing that anyone has ever wanted or ever will.

 

And it’s just like you – isn’t it Isaac? – to ruin the first nice thing that’s happened to you since your mother left and your brother died. It is. It’s just like you to want to pin him down with your body, to pretend he’s yours, to kiss him like you have any right to, because he’s not yours, he’s hers and everyone could see it back then – can see it even now – when they are apart, when they try to pretend they be something else but  _together_ _._

  

**2\. Lydia**

 

_“And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.”_

You remember the first time you really saw him, already tall and beautiful, jaw square and perfect like the ones the boys had on the books that Mother used pretend she didn’t read. He had just turned thirteen – you were two months older – and back then it felt like it made a difference, like you knew better because of it.

 

Except that you knew, didn’t you?

 

You took one look at him and it was just like that, done deal, he was meant to be yours and you were to keep him as such. People joke about Stiles’ single-minded focus when it came to you, but he loved in you what he saw in himself, for you were too focused to the point of oblivion.

 

You saw Jackson that night, at Allie Fritz’s birthday party, wearing a purple button down and khakis. He smiled when he caught you looking, a different smile from the ones he had after, not even a hint of cockiness or confidence behind it. It was just a smile, dimpled and innocent, and your heart leaped, ending up somewhere between your throat and your stomach.

 

You liked it, that way that smile made you feel out of sorts. You liked that leap in your stomach, and you liked it even more when he guided you behind the pine tree in the Fritz’s backyard and pressed his lips against your – quick and soft – seemingly self-assured even though you both could feel his hands trembling.

 

You pretended you didn’t noticed, and he fell for you too that night.

 

It’s been three years since, and life has become infinitely stranger. Jackson had just died, twice, and came to life. A dead person had fucked with your head and made you lose control; the boy you loved became a lizard and was used by a psycho as a mass-murder weapon.

 

He was looking at you with something akin to wonder and regret, and he was saying words like  _London,_ and  _starting over,_ and  _I can’t have a life when I’m supposed to be dead._ So you’re nodding, and you’re saying yes but you can’t barely hear him from above the roar in your ears, for it is all written in his eyes, in the twist of his hands even though his voice sounded firm, sure, when he said for the first time  _I love you, Lydia._ When he said for the last time,  _I love you Lydia._

You remember that first night, when you started, at the way he kept touching your waist, your elbow, your back. You remember the way the night smelled, like cotton candy and lemonade, like summer, and the scratch of the bark when he pressed your against it. You remember thinking  _the one, the one, the one,_  but now you are thinking  _it’s over, it’s over, it’s over_ , and he keeps saying over and over, like a prayer, like it would make any difference:  _I love you, Lydia, I love you, Lyd-_

**3\. Boyd**

 

_“My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It’s all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we’re back in the world we’ve always known.”_

Erica’s patience is wearing thin, and it’s palpable, the way she’s mentally gearing herself up for battle. Maybe it’s because you’ve come to know her so well, these four months of being cooped up together in this vault, or maybe it’s because of the way she started looking at you after the Bite like she was half daring you to come across the room and sweep her off her feet. You’ve yet to gather the courage to try to do such a thing because she’s beautiful and fierce and you would die for her – you would – and that’s more overwhelming than anything else.

 

But she also looks at you like she understands, and like it is okay, taking your time getting there, to treat her like the precious thing that she is. You like the way her curls frame her face, and you like the way her lips are a sin of its own category. But what you like the most is the bravery you see in her eyes.

 

She’s talking about the solar eclipse and how maybe this is your chance, the chance to get out of there, to return to your lives and to Derek – if he will have you back – and you can almost see it, the fight, the blood under your hands, the way your mom would hug you if you knocked on your parents’ door in the middle of the night, unannounced but expected just the same.

 

You can also see the two of you walking the hallways of school together, junior year ahead, college and maybe being normal again, maybe taking her hand and kissing those deadly knuckles of hers when no one was looking.

 

It’s close enough to taste, this possible reality, the long nights studying for the SAT’s and learning each other’s bodies, the way she moved and the way she tasted, a hint of peach and whiskey, you can imagine.

 

She keeps talking and looking at you like she understands, a soft smile on those wicked lips, and the glint in her eyes lets you know she knows exactly what you’re thinking, feeling, and that maybe she wants it too.

 

Your heart accelerates and slows at the same time, because she’s getting up, she’s moving forward and maybe she’ll crash into you, an unstoppable force to the unmovable object that is your body and your hesitance, and you want to say  _stay,_ you want to say  _c'mere_ , you want to reach and do something but she—

 

She’s running towards Kali, and she’s yelling for you to run, and you want to scream  _stop_ but the words die in your throat just like the future you had allowed yourself to imagine dies in the Alpha’s arms. Erica falls to the ground and she never gets up, never moves again in that graceful ways of hers, silent and fluid. She never gets up and kisses you like she means it, like it’s the start of something good, like you had both expected it to happen once upon a time.

 

**4\. Scott**

 

_“You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It’s just a matter of will power: The day you decide it’s over, it’s over. You never get over it.”_

 

Stiles keeps looking at you as if your behavior is not natural and this is merely the calm before the storm. He’s partly right, because you’re surprising yourself with the calmness you feel over this, over them and their closeness that sort of feels like it popped out from out of nowhere, but maybe you were just too blind to see it, to feel it coming.

 

Isaac smiles a lot more now, though, and you can’t resent him for that. Allison looks a little bit like her old self – the girl she was when you lent her your pen and gave her you heart – but it’s better now, like the old her and the new her from right after her mother died blended together in this awesome package of ruthlessness and kindness all mixed together. Her lips look even softer now, though her eyes are more guarded – but never around Isaac anymore – and it makes you glad, in a way, the she gets to have this now. To feel confortable in her own skin.

 

It’s awful, it is, but you’re still glad they’re good for each other in all the ways that you can’t be good for her now or the ways you tried to be for Isaac too.

 

It doesn’t mean that it’s not difficult, though, seeing the way they look at each other.

 

She smiles at him, but your heart still lights up. He touches her, but it feels like it’s your skin that's on fire. You miss them like hell every day, even when they’re standing right next to you, even when the three of you are laughing in the cafeteria or planning to take down something that the Nemeton lured in.

 

You can’t fault them for this. Isaac loves fiercely and there’s something so sweet in his eyes when he lets go of the darkness that haunts him, when he lets someone in. There’s also the way he smiles; it takes on a life of its own when it’s one of his genuine smiles, because they’re blinding. You can understand why Allison feels the pull to reach over, to cause it, or to stand in front of him with her bow and arrows so ready to hurt whoever planned to lay a hand on him.

 

Isaac is loyal and stubborn and he just wants someone to love him back. He deserves it too.

 

So yes, you can’t fault Allison for seeing how amazing he can be, how amazing he already is. Just like you can’t hate Isaac for falling for her, for the surety of her hands, never trembling anymore, or the way her skin flushes under attention, pink and inviting, her body made of soft curves but still so strong, so capable. You can’t blame Isaac for seeing her infinite strength, her determination to create her own history, to honor and set herself apart from her family at the same time.

 

You can’t hate them for loving each other because you understand it all too well. You love them too. It would be easier if you could hate them but it was never in you, the kind of power it took to hate someone. All the energy you have, you put into love, because that is how your mom taught you how to live, how your father taught you to be simply by not being.

 

So instead, it’s just hard, seeing two people you love fall in love with each other. It’s hard and it hurts, but you don’t know how to let go of either of them – you want to give them up, but you still don’t want to feel this way anymore, like there’s a shape missing under your hands, like there’s a voice missing from your ears, like you’re pulled into a million different directions when they’re apart from you and pulled back together when they to stand by your side. 

 

You’re left like this, stuck in the worst place you could possibly be, bent out of shape, missing everything and everyone at the same time, dreading the moment they finally figure themselves out but longing for it to happen all the same because maybe it will feel like a release, seeing Isaac and Allison together at last, maybe it will feel like moving on. Or maybe it will just hurt even more.

 

So Stiles waits for you to fall apart. You know he is, because you’re waiting too.

 

**5.  Allison**

 

_“The half-life of love is forever.”_

It’s not like you’re torn. For all you were now and all you had been, there was never a time when you censored your love – you always gave it freely, willingly, and there was no taking back. You loved Scott the first time he looked at you and his jaw went uneven with his smile. You loved your dad the first you remember him tucking you in bed, smile easy and caring, a  _good night, Allie_ accompanied by a kiss on your forehead. You loved your mom before even remembering what love was, and it still hurts, the way you carry her actions from before Scott and the mother she was to you before and during him. There was never a question of her love, even if she was hard, even if she demanded too much and gave little.

 

There was Lydia, a love born of everything you had thought you were and everything the two of you turned out not to be. She was your sister in all the ways that mattered – a bond forged in tears, and blood, and lies – and there was no one better you would choose to stand beside you in battle. There was Stiles too, a brother and a friend, someone you were glad to have on your side rather than on opposite lines because he was just as ruthless as you were when it came to love and protecting the ones you cared about.

 

And later there was Isaac, Isaac who flinched when crowded too close, someone who had claws but preferred to touch you with his fingertips. You remember how he looked that day when you were trapped in the closet, and it breaks your heart every single time. It makes you ache with shame too, for you had hurt him once with your knives and more than once with your words.

 

But there was an unlimited amount of forgiveness in Isaac’s heart for you, just like there was in Scott’s, and that’s what made it so difficult. All the rules, all the literature and the television told you you had to choose, to pick one,  _just one_. But why couldn’t you keep them, when there was no giving back the love? Why couldn’t you have the way Isaac understood all the dark parts of you, your need to protect yourself and others, and also have the way Scott made you feel small and big at the same time, cared for and admired?

 

Your love for them complimented each other. There was no either/or.

 

And even if you chose one, the other was still going to be there. He would be there because he was pack, he was family, and he would be there because you committed your heart to love them, and that was that.

 

People might not understand it, might not approve of it, but the fact was that you love Scott. But you love Isaac too. And maybe there’s a way that it can work, between the three of you. Maybe there’s a way that no one is miserable, and no one is pining, and you get to be selfish. That you get to keep them.

 

Scott once said you were meant to be, and even if you didn’t want to believe it, you kind of do. There’s no undoing that, no getting in the way of something like that, but Isaac never tried, did he? He just snuck in, under your skin, under Scott’s skin, and made a home for himself. Maybe the star-crossed lovers story never ends well because there’s something missing. Maybe Isaac is that something.

 

You will never know until you try.

 

What was it, what Stiles had said that one time?  _It’s all about belief in the end,_ or something. You want it enough to believe it will work, this new shape your life is taking. You want it enough and love the two of them enough to will it to work. Belief, and a spark. You have those things in spades. You have  _it_.

  

**6\.  Danny**

_“This is what I know: people’s hope go on forever”_

Ethan skips town in April, leaves behind only a note with a hasty  _I love you_ stuck in your locker, the gift you’d bought him for his birthday in May  and the way he had touched you like you were wonderful imprinted on your mind.

 

He leaves and he changes his number and you never see him again. There’s bereavement, sure, but you’re mostly pissed out of your fucking mind. You had never given him a reason to treat you like less than the person you deserve to be treated as, and up until that third night of April, he had been sweet and perfect and everything a girl or a boy hoped their first boyfriend to be but rarely was.

 

You give yourself two days to grieve and you do it well, by eating grapes and watching Gilmore Girls with your little sister's arms wrapped around you. Then you glower at everybody who dares to see you if you’re fine – Scott, Isaac – or threatens to find Ethan, fuck his shit up and give you his testicles – Stiles, Lydia, Allison and even Jackson from a very pouty Skype call from London.

 

You go to the Jungle two weeks later and let some lean boy with stubble kiss you until your lips tingle. He’s nothing like Ethan and everything you need at the moment to stop yourself from trying to call him again, only to hear that awful mechanic voice telling you that  _This number has been disconnected._

You could technically find him, if you wanted to.

 

But the thing is…the thing is that you’re kind of relieved.

 

All those nights when you talked and were lying so close together like nothing could come between the two of you – you will take those nights with you, untainted and perfect. You will take his crooked smile, the way his eyes danced whenever you sent a dimple on his way, the look of wonder on his face once you put your hands on him; nothing can take that. Nothing can top that.

 

So you’re a little bit relieved because this wayit’s not tainted. This way you get to carry around these nine perfect months of a relationship where nothing awful happened, where no hearts where broken and no one cheated. When there was sweetness and laughter and lazy nights kissing on your mother’s swing.

 

It was like a goddamned fairytale – it really was – despite his claws and the rough beginning. And this is the fucked-up way you get the happily-ever-after, this is the way you can pretend that the prince left for a hunt and you’re the other prince left behind defending the castle and keeping an eye out for enemies.

 

This is the best-case scenario for the two of you to end, with no indication that it’s an ending, nothing final, dead, or sordid like betrayal left behind – only the bitter taste of his disappearance and the sweet one of longing, because you’re still young, but he felt like _the one_.

 

This is the way it ends with hope, and it doesn’t make it okay, but it makes it easier somehow, to keep going. Maybe you’re naïve. Or maybe you’re just hopelessly optimistic. But you don’t make a fuss about him leaving – that’s not your style – you know better than to let it go like this, in flames and tears, and maybe this way, no one will say you were surprised if – when – Ethan storms back into town, an apologetic smile on his lips, hands reaching for yours. And maybe no one will be surprised either to see you reaching back with a smile of your own.

 

**7\. Stiles**

_“Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it’s worth.”_

You said you would move on and you kind of did. There was Heather, and maybe she was the one, but you never had the time to figure that out. There were some moments of  _something_  with Derek, but you don’t like to think about that because there’s no point when he’s broken and you’re broken and he’s gone anyway, right? He left, and he didn’t even said goodbye, so. Yeah.

 

But _she_ stays. She stays and she’s still brilliant, still sharp and even more wonderful because she’s more  _real_ now that you truly got to know her, insecurities and jagged edges and all. And you complement each other in odd ways – you do. Lydia sees you like no one does, sees the calculating and selfish parts of you, and she takes it all in stride without a moment’s hesitation. She knows too, what it's like to love and lose, and she was the one who held you under while you struggled for breath, while you sacrificed a part of your humanity.

 

And all those nights after, when you can’t sleep and there’s no amount of Adderall to fix the way your blood seems to buzz from under your skin, you can call her. She lets you talk about anything except what’s really bothering you, and she humors you most of the time, engages in your long-winded discussions about the state of flux or J.K. Rowling’s adapting ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’ to the big screen. She listens and she meets you every step of the way and you find yourself wondering why you can’t want her like you used to, why you can look at her and appreciate but not desire.

 

You ask her, once, after she’s done with Aiden for the fourth time, if she would ever give you a chance. She looks at you as if she’s accessing your potential, and it’s only half-joking and half-true, and then she says _sure._ Like it is that easy.

 

And maybe it is, because three months later,  you start fucking. It’s right after the mermaids attack, but not before Peter tries to make another power grab, and it starts when you’re watching Avengers and listing all the reasons why you think Natasha Romanov and Lydia are freakishly alike. She leans in and kisses you, tongue slipping in without hesitance, and that’s it.

 

You will never not kiss her back, not in this lifetime, and eventually she tells you where to put your hands and you do, but you also tell her where she can put hers. It’s a democracy in this bedroom, you say, and it startles a laugh right out of her. It feels almost better than the way her curves feel under your hands, because it’s been too long since she laughed like that, unguarded and loud.

 

You fuck for six months, all the way into senior year, and you never once call it a relationship. She sometimes sleeps over when your dad is at the station and sometimes you have sex, but sometimes you just watch movies or do your homework or pour over the bestiary. 

 

She talks to you about Jackson a little bit, and she lets you glimpse into the parts of her that are still not over him. You maybe want to tell her about Derek, about the way you miss his sass and his dramatic eye rolls, but you don’t even know where to start or how to explain it all that’s happened between the two of them, especially during that summer before junior year. So you just say,  _Derek_ , and she nods like she knows. Maybe she does. And if she doesn’t, you appreciate just the same.

 

You don’t call it a relationship because it’s not one. It’s a friendship, sure, and it’s a sex-ship as well, but those things are separate and tangled in your mind at the same time. There’s Lydia, the girl you adore and relate to, and there’s the Lydia who turns you on and knows that sometimes you need a firm hand holding you down, grounding you here, making you speechless. They interlope, but at the same time, they don’t.

 

The sex-ship ends just as abruptly as it began. Suddenly there’s a lot more sleeping and a little less fooling around, and gradually it just dissolves. She asks you once, about a month after the last time, if you regret it, regret her.

 

You tell her the truth – you tell her that there was no one else out there that you would rather have given your virginity to, that is was everything you needed and more than you hoped for – so she gives you this secret, soft smile that she gives sometimes when she’s pleased but can’t find the words to say so. Then she kisses your cheek and it feels like an  _I love you,_ like a  _Thank you for loving me,_ and so you hold her close and kiss her hair, say it silently back, all those things she said.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I appreciate the feedback :)


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